Assassin's Creed (Xbox 360, 2007)

After all the hype and record setting sales, I felt the need to give my honest opinion on Assassins Creed. Hopefully it will help you decide if you should buy it or rent it.
The Good -
The one thing that really stands out is the main characters movement through the game world. Never has a character climbed, scaled and jumped through his environment as well as Altair from AC. This game sets the standard for this and hopefully all games in the future will follow in AC's footsteps. The guards AI also use the same abilities as they track you down and as you run from rooftop to rooftop. This gets your pulse pounding as you try to escape from them.
Also using throwing knives to take out guards is a nice touch and jumping down from you perch is always fun and i never tired of these activities.
The graphics and art style are for the most part done very well too, the cities are detailed and interesting , the lighting is nice and the character model is well done too. The time spent polishing the game shows and overall everything works the way it should.
Thats about all the good stuff...well what about the story , combat and the assassinations ? Unfortunately they and all feel pretty average and repetitive.
The Bad-
To start nothing is really BAD or broken about this game but there are certain things that need to be pointed out.
I was pretty underwhelmed with the story in AC. The plot never really motivated me to push on to uncover the story. I wont spoil anything but basically just finishing the game was my driving force.
The developers touted how great the interaction with the enviroment would be but blending in with the crowd forces you to walk painfully slow and i got bored with it quickly. Simply running away and not caring if i was spotted was much more fun.
Another missed opportunity for the developers is that although the cities are full shops and markets all over the place, you cant interact with them. This could have added ALOT to the game but for some reason there is no "items",other than the few you get for completing missions in the game. It would have been great getting new armor, weapons and accessories. Everyone knows how addictive it can be to seek out the best items in a game like Oblivion. But you wont find anything like that here. The combat is decent and having the camera switch to a more cinematic view during fights is cool but again it is very limited with few moves to learn you will find yourself doing the same thing over and over. The missions are also very repetitive. You do the same things to gather information for every assassination. Again the lack of variety drags the game down. You may have heard there are tons of items to find through out AC....FLAGS. Hundreds of flags to find..and they are not fun to find like the orbs in crackdown because you dont gain anything relevant to your character. They dont make you stealthier or stronger or faster. I never felt i needed to find them all.
One of the worst things in the game is the crazy, drunk and poor beggar NPCs that constantly annoy you while you make your way closer to your target. Most people will just kill or punch them but i wish these were left out or given more depth. Also where are the night time levels ? Any good assassin would use the cover of darkness and sadly the horse riding segments seemed tacked on.
So should you get AC ? Yes and it is good but I would rent it first. Overall i just wish they had made Prince of Persia 4 instead.

Assassins Creed is, to me, one of the most amazing titles I have seen in any gaming genre in a long time. The graphics are extrordinary from the birds eyeview you can get of Acre all the way down to the tiniest character details. The gameplay engine imbues an incredibly intuitive control style, with the depth of a fully populated world, including even beggars and drunks who might interfere with your objectives.

The game sets you as Altair, an assassin from a clan based off the historical Hassassins of the Crusades. The majority of the game is set in 1191 A.D., during the 3rd Crusade, in probably as near to as possible recreations of the cities of Maysef, Jerusalim, Acre, and Damascus. You are given a mission to redeem your virtue in the cllan by slaying 9 people who propogate the holy wars in that era. These 9 are actual historical figures who died in the year 1191 and lead lives accoringly similar to the roles they actually played in history. Whether or not they were actually killed by one of the Hassassins in actual history may be debatable, but the presence of real history in this game is so large that it makes it have a very believable story, and an almost instantly immersive experience.

One of the more interesting features in the game is the ability to run, climb and jump from/to/across/up, almost every surface. You see a wall, as long as there is a loose brick or a window sill for a hand-hold, up you go.

The story mechanics used within the game make each kill raise a feeling of doubt, shame, and guilt. Altair kills not because he likes to, but because it is what he must due to help instill peace in the holy land.

Its not all ups though. The prelude to each kill involves missions that recquire you to gather information and whereabouts for your target, and optionally, help to set up the kill or procure an escape afterward. While they do imply the reality of what it may be like to successfully assassinate a person, these become increasingly repetative in nature. Save the monks, eavesdroping, pickpocketing, or intimadating your foes to find out what you want is fun the first few times, but later become only entertaining as the way to further the story. This is how most sandbox games act anyway (i.e. Grand Theft Auto: Drive here, race him, get this item, kill that guy, essentially sums it up).

The game also lacks multiplayer functionality, which really doesn't bother me, but does some people that I know.

And further, some of the things that were noticable in the early previews. Most notably missed is Altair's crossbow, unless there is some way yet unknown to me to acquire it.

The special edition comes in a tin case, and includes the game; a bonus dvd with behind the scenes footage, the trailers, and interviews; a short comic book; and a Altair figurine (cheaply made, poorly painted, but quite detailed none-the-less).

All and all, the game is extremely playable, and re-playable. The story is captivating to the point that within minutes of beating it the first time, I was already online trying to dig up information on a sequel.

Assassin's Creed is a bloody dive into a beautiful world of warriors and the assassins who hate them. Beautiful animation, stylish low-saturation graphics, and city-wide chases are all fundamentally wonderful in Creed. There really isn't another game quite like it. Unfortunately, there isn't another game with issues quite like Creed's, either. Assassin's Creed tries to be a stealth game, an action game, a stealth kill game and a platformer, and to innovate in each category. But for each amazing step forward, Creed takes a half-step back.

Quietly Killing Time

Assassin's Creed revolves around the assassinations of nine key targets in the Third Crusade (as well as some "other" points in history). Acre, Jerusalem, and Damascus are rendered in beautiful grays and earth tones, creating the effect of free-running across a giant tomb. It's in the free-running that you'll find the game's most original and satisfying gameplay, tearing across cities as medieval hitman Altair.

By holding down a trigger and the action button, Altair can nimbly ascend anything. Once you're free-running, gameplay becomes about maintaining a perfect line of motion rather than hitting the jump button at just the right time. There's a very steep learning curve, because these free-running portions look more like platforming than they actually play. The basic idea is to hold down the free-running buttons and point Altair in the right direction. Your job isn't to micromanage jumps; your job is to point Altair towards his victims and make sure they die cleanly.


In order to secure your targets' deaths, you have to climb a few "synchronization points," the tallest buildings in a city's district. Each district has half a dozen or more of these, with each city divided into three districts. Climbing to the very highest point of these structures is really fun. There isn't any other game that quite captures the heart-pounding pleasure of simply ascending, endlessly, with nothing but your wits and fingertips to guide you.

Each sync point unveils a roundup of choices on your mini-map, including citizens to rescue (who'll then help you later) and various clues you'll have to unlock in order to earn permission to kill your target. You might have to interrogate an enemy agent, pickpocket a map, or simply kill a few Templars without being caught -- and within a time limit.
While that sounds like a forgiving, interesting way to represent "investigating" your target, the mission types all blur into a homogenous mix of unskippable introductory cut-scenes and difficulty that is always too hard or too easy. Until mission seven, the toughest job you're likely to have is to go to your HUD marker, sit at the bench, and hit the Y button to listen in on a conversation.

I've Never Run

But once you hit the seventh mission, the timed stealth murder sprees become trial and error, simply hoping you can make your hits before some random guard bumps into you, forcing you to redo the entire mission. They're not long, but it's an irritant to repeat the same mini-mission over and over again. More disappointing, chances to explain why your target deserves to die are passed up for simple chatter. Each mini-mission's cut-scene is merely exposition, always telling instead of showing.

Missions in free-roaming, open-world games give the player a sense of direction, a sense of not being lost in the world.
Overall Rating- 10/10

Assassins Creed is about a skilled Assassin named Altair who lived during the third Crusade in the year 1191. His objective is to slay the nine historical figures who are propagating the Crusades

This game deserve a 5 out 5 because of its great game play, smooth graphics and game features. The best feature of the game is that you are able to climb any building throughout the three historically correct cities of Jerusalem, Acre and Damascus. In between the cities you can ride on horseback through different environments and meet new enemies.

Another great thing is the side missions such as saving citizens, pickpocketing people, spying, and finding different items are very fun.

Every thing in this game is interactive such as the crowd filled with beggars who just keep begging you for money. You can push people out of you way, or if your running to fast you might actually trip over one. You can also blend in with priests to get into heavily guarded areas. There are also many different places to hide just in case you need to make a quick escape. You can hide in hay stacks, small huts on top of roofs and blend in with the crowd.

There are infinite things do in this game and infinite ways to do them and that is another reason this game deserves a 5 out of 5.

This is a fantastic game - the graphics are amazing and the game play is superb. It's an original story (you technically live in the future but 'travel back' through time via your DNA memory map) and a story line that makes sense. I do enjoy how there are limited buttons to really control your character (in other words you don't have to memorize X,Y,A,A,RT,left forward to do a particular move) but instead focus on the story... There are a number of side stories and the achievements are interesting. There's no way on earth I can imagine completing many of the side tasks without the strategy guide (for example trying to find 100 hidden flags in the city without a good map would either take forever or take so long you really need to get out more)... Unlike other games (even like Oblivion which is great but the stupid lock pick or 'conversation' parts of the game are simply annoying) there hasn't yet been a time when I've said, "Now this is just annoying." If you want to play sneaky and tricky and have more patience, sneak around a city and "blend in." If you're in the mood to kick ass, kill a few guards and fight your way through... No need for Live on this one - why spoil it? Great game all around.